with direct eyes, to death's other kingdom
by JestaAriadne
Summary: /He'd promised to protect her. The one promise he'd always meant to keep. The only one that mattered. And now, though he was already dead, the memory of that promise was killing him./ Rated for allusions to violence.


**NOTE: **I'm so excited by the response to the other fics I recently posted (thank you! yes you too, anonymous person) - because the CATS fandom still lives! I would love to get back into it… I'm really not much for long fic so if I do ever write more, expect more little bits of angst like this… (OH, except. There was that one idea for a Buffy-style episodic supernatural dramedy about Admetus discovering his Rumpus Cat powers. I thought so much about that. I should maybe write more of it. Anyway.)

This. Was originally a response to a challenge on the Jellicle Moon fic archive for something _using the random pairing gen_ (see the link in my profile.) And I got Mungojerrie/Exotica. And that is what this is. Only… _well_. It's very dramatical. It isn't a direct allegory for anything. I can tell now it's somewhat inspired by Yuffie Valentine's Mungo/Teazer fic _Roses Wither Away,_ if anyone remembers _that_ long ago.

I've dusted it down the original version and edited it slightly for posting - which is to say: I've taken out about 60% of the ellipses! …when you see how many ellipses _remain_…

The title is from _The Hollow Men_ by TS Eliot.

* * *

"Came to find you..."

Words didn't come easily, in that place. He forced his eyes open, his lips apart, the breath he didn't have any more misting in the freezing air.

Mungojerrie stumbled onwards.

"I came - t'find - you -"

But he wasn't sure now if he was making a sound. He walked - if you can call it that - on and on and on, but she wasn't there. There was nothing but this featureless landscape: plain and misleading as the inside of his eyelids, nothing but the sand slipping and grating beneath his feet. He couldn't see her anywhere. Maybe he wasn't moving at all. Maybe the non-existent ground that shifted grey and blue and soft and sharp was an illusion too, and treacherous.

"E..!" he shouted, and as the single syllable finally ripped itself out of his chest and his throat, he collapsed on the blue-grey sand. There was no blood, not anymore, not here, like there was no breath; there were just the open wounds, just gaping _holes_ and missing patches in a patchwork of mismatched fur... an absurd sight... They'd done the job properly alright, when they killed him.

None of that mattered now. Nor do the simple and sordid circumstances which led to this and which are all too quickly told. Mungojerrie had got into trouble. He was always in trouble; such was his life. He'd made promises he couldn't keep, which is what you did in his world of lawless avenues and omnipotent gangland lords, just to survive. Just to buy yourself a little time and survive a little longer... But of course, for all the laughs, he and his friends had always known that it was likely to end up like this for each of them, sooner or later. The cards had been dealt long before he'd known that they were playing.

But _he'd promised to protect her._ The one promise he'd always meant to keep. The only one that mattered. And now, though he was already dead, the memory of that promise was killing him.

"I dun' know where you are..." he whispered, less than a whisper, because the place was stealing away the life and breath from him... an absurd thought... He almost laughed, but stopped a million miles short.

She had, she had always had, an unreal quality about her. Ineffably fragile, but surely untouchable, unbreakable. So he had thought. Who _was_ she? She had been his secret - but, he realised with a sudden stabbing pain that was far worse than anything that had yet happened, he knew hardly anything about her. She was gone and he had nothing, _nothing_ to hold on to.

She'd never liked to talk about her past. With her elegant manner, the perfect lines and symmetries of her features, Exotica could have been some red-cushion beauty whose owners had died... or abandoned her. She could have fallen straight out of some Oriental fairy tale. She was all that and far more to him. She didn't, she couldn't, belong in _his_ dusty, dangerous world. (But if he'd known who to thank, he would have poured out gratitude every single day that she was there all the same.) So he'd tried to keep her a secret from them, to keep her safe.

He'd failed.

But none of that mattered now. Because suddenly he thought heard her voice, carried on the perfectly still air.

"_Mungo?_"

Can you hallucinate when you're dead? Could you dream up such impossible, uncatchable torn-velvet sweetness? Well, of course you could, and when better? Little else in the world had failed to practise some deception on him; why should his own mind be any different?

He didn't care. He scrambled to his feet.

"E!" he called again, like to speak her whole name was to step into the presence of something so set apart and holy he'd be burned up in an instant, "E!"

"_Mungojerrie?_"

Mungojerrie felt his heart squeeze painfully. He swallowed hard. "I'm here... I'm-"

"_Mungo...?_"

"Here!" he shouted, "I'm here! I -"

He stopped. In a single terrifying instant, Mungojerrie realised she that she couldn't hear him.

"_Mungo?_"

The pressure in his chest intensified. "I'm here!" He strained his eyes, started running in a random direction. The sand flew up all around him, stinging his eyes and choking his useless lungs...

"_Mungo, I'm sorry._"

That stunned him so much he stopped running.

"_I'm so, so sorry. They killed you too, didn't they? It was my fault!_"

"No!" Mungojerrie tried to shout, but once again the wind in that place snatched away the word before he could utter it. Never, he wanted to say. Never! Never yours.

"_...And now I can't find you...!_"

Her voice caught at something and broke.

"I'm here! I'm _here_," he cried again, his voice breaking too. "...why can't you hear me...?"

* * *

Later, maybe. Time is irrelevant.

Her voice in that place was everywhere and nowhere. Sometimes he tried to find her, sometimes he fell to the ground, sand in his eyes and his gashes. None of that mattered.

"_I was never perfect. I didn't deserve what you gave me. I am - so - sorry. F-forgive me? Please?_"

"O' course I do!" he cried, despite the pain of speaking, and the fact that it was useless anyway... "I - anything! There's nothin' to forgive! E, there's nothin' you ever did, it was me. It was me. It was always -" Punctured lungs took a deep, unreal breath and he tried to steady himself. "Can you ever forgive me?"

"_Of course, of course, anything - Mungo-!_"

"You can hear me!" Mungojerrie sprang forward again.

"_Yes_!"

He ran on and on, but the darkness and the desert yielded nothing. "Oh, E, E, where are you?"

"_I... I don't know._"

Her voice was everywhere and nowhere... Could it - _oh, Everlasting Cat, please no_ \- be only in his head?

Do dead cats dream, anyway?

"I wish I could find you..." he moaned.

"_Me too!_"

The closest to a laugh you could manage here, and it was nearly enough to break your heart.

Mungojerrie stopped and strained his eyes again. He tried to listen. There was no sound except the wind.

It had become much louder without his noticing the change.

When Exotica spoke again, her voice was serious, and hesitant. Mungojerrie shivered.

"_I think... I think it's going to get worse before it gets better. That's always the way, you know._"

"I won' lose you again," he said.

...If he closed his eyes he could almost see her, almost feel her. Fur ruffled by the wind she was _so close_. Were those his tears or hers trickling down his mutilated face?

"_I don't want you to worry... ok? This - this isn't real, or - it's not real enough. This isn't the end. Any minute now we'll wake up and we'll be back in the world before it ever went wrong, before we can remember... like it was meant to be, ok? You mustn't be scared."_

Her soft voice was gently rending him to pieces all over again.

_"You know... All of this. All the shadows are going to come tumbling down like rain..."_

"I won' lose you again," he insisted, wager-my-soul-against-all-the-world...

_"And then we'll see it all clearly… Face to face."_

"I won' lose you!" There was an ache inside him, deeper and more lasting than any of his wounds.

_"Oh, Mungo, please...! It's so hard to hold on to... And it's so dark. I can't do this on my own!"_

The tears were pouring down now from his closed eyes, splashing down and sinking into the sand without a trace...

"You're not on your own!" he cried. "Oh, E, E, I'm here, I just... I don't understand..."

_"...Face to face..."_

"Yes... I - "

_"Promise me..."_

He opened his eyes.

Exotica stood before him.

She too was marked and torn, but still - as she'd always been. Regal and humble and beautiful. Her eyes, just as he had always known them, held unexplainable love and sadness.

He tried to stretch out a paw to reach her, but an expanse opened up between them. They were falling each backwards, torn apart and away, away… She cried out - the sand swirled, whipped into the air, hard and hot and _burning_ -

Mungojerrie dug his claws in, striving for purchase, even as the whole landscape was ripped up and flung in all directions. The desert became a dry, driving river...

"I will find you!" he cried above the noise, again and again, though each utterance seemed to tear his whole body in two. "I will find you!"

And then there was nothing at all.

* * *

The sands settle. They are gone. But what does it matter? Theirs' is only one of a thousand-a-day unwitnessed tragedies, played out with so little grace.

Do dead cats dream? Can torn souls entertain such cruel delusions of hope and a future?

Or perhaps it was merely that he had never died at all, not yet: this is possibly crueler still. Life had always seemed so unfair to Mungojerrie, though he never complained, merely got on with it as best he could. Poor reward to merely wake up again to his life, knowing all the while that it could only end one way, that he was destined to lose his Exotica. His Exotica, his waking dream; had she ever really been at all?

When the storm cleared up and and the sands cooled, they might have been swept away forever, vanished without a trace. Or sent back into the dark, reborn blind into the world, without a clue, without a chance. Would you see two more kittens, just trying again to find something lovely and tragic and un-remembered, and getting _no closer each time_?

Or could you find, somewhere, clearer and more real than ever before, Exotica and her Mungojerrie... laughing with his sister and all their friends...? Laughing as everything falls into place at last. Completely in love. _Complete_ in love.

...Somewhere where the shadows have fallen away for the last time, and the rain has made a garden of every desert...


End file.
